Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Wohoon, in less than 10 words

Thundarr the Barbarian, with backgrounds drawn by Salvador Dali.

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There are a lot of great settings being cooked up at the moment: Thool, Athanor, The Valley of Blue Snails, Yoon-Suin, Cinder. If you're working on one, I'd love to hear a summary in 25 words or less (And please post a link if you've got someplace online where you go on and on about it!).

All right, here's a quick breakdown of my homebrew setting, Freed Lands, which will use the BRP ruleset if I ever finish it:

Basically, take a sorta-medieval fantasy setting, come up with sorta-scientifically legitimate reasons for there to be multiple sapient races running around, then haunt it with ancient, inscrutable spirit beings that will grant power... for a price. Finally, strand the players in a backwater land torn by religious strife, plague, famine, warfare, and feudal intrigue, and let them try to carve out a kingdom.

Or, the 14-word version:

A Song of Ice and Fire meets West of Eden, animated by Hayao Miyazaki.

Wow. Such an illustrious list for Athanor to be included in! Athanor in 25 word or less: Weird science fantasy on a dying planet that has forgotten its past (with dinosaurs and the occasional ray gun.) 19 words? Good enough.

Is this for Call of Cthulhu or a fantasy world?My Call of Cthulhu games are much more sensible! This would be a fantasy game, which I'd probably run using Labyrinth Lord. I have an urge to explore a world that's part Bakshi's Wizards, part King's Dark Tower, with a dash of Mad Max 3 and a little bit of Lankhmar. The elves ran the previous empire, which fell thousands of years ago, leaving them as near-feral barbarians eager to regain power, and the vampires are what the current human civilisation becomes, once it has grown, gone through a golden age, and fallen into decline. They've run out of resources, and their world is dying, so they're coming back to steal ours, paradox be damned.